


When the Night Ended

by RobberBaroness



Category: Dracula - Bram Stoker
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-02
Updated: 2013-10-02
Packaged: 2017-12-28 06:33:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/988851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobberBaroness/pseuds/RobberBaroness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mina and Jonathan help each other heal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When the Night Ended

There was hardly a night since they’d been married when Jonathan and Mina did not share a bed, but there were several when they’d shared it as strangers. Mina was paradoxical and unpredictable in her desires, not the least to her own mind. Some nights she would beg her husband to hold her close, and not to let go no matter what happened, and some nights his touch set her to weeping. He did not protest, for he’d behaved much the same way upon his initial return to England- his nightmares had been so terrible that if Mina merely touched him in his sleep, Jonathan would jerk his body away without even waking. Their marriage had been consummated by daylight, the only time when he could have trusted that her touch was really her own, much less pulled her on top of him and smiled at her excitement.

It would be foolish to say who suffered more, or worse, and Mina had no intention of doing so. All she knew was that she had an additional fear that he had been saved from- the fear that if she kissed him it would do him terrible harm, her poison seeping in through his lips and stopping his breath.

Everyone told stories about women who had suffered some terrible wrong; Mina still remembered reading _The Monk_ in secret with Lucy, and wishing poor Antonia hadn’t had to die after already being so horribly treated. But she knew far less about what happened to the women who weren’t killed or cast onto the streets or sent away to nunneries. She knew she was supposed to carry the pain every day, but what if she didn’t want to? What if she still laughed at Quincey’s jokes or smiled to see the strange countryside while traveling? What if that pain could coexist with every part of her that had been there before the Count forced his blood into her body, with no contradiction?

It was after her first hypnosis session that she was conscious of her desires. When Jonathan held her hand and told her how brave she had been, she remembered how often, during their engagement, they had let propriety slip. His shirt unbuttoned and her skirt lifted, they had restrained themselves as much as they thought absolutely necessary- but no farther. Oh, how he had kissed the length of her legs, and how she had whispered into his ear her impatience for a wedding, holding him close enough to feel his rapidly beating heart.

She wanted it, but want fought with fear. Was it really she who felt such things, or was the monster inside whose mind she had been now pulling her strings, debasing her further by her own hand? Or had it been the power that she had experienced that made her bold, and reassured her that the darkness she had seen had been neither hers nor her love’s?

Everything would change when Dracula had been destroyed, that much she knew. And it did, if only a little at a time.

Being held by Jonathan became less painful but more necessary, and again she took reassurance from his beating heart. They had both survived, and needed the other’s presence to stave off memories. But sleep itself still did not come easy, and in those moments awake in the dead of night, they took to simple talking. And once, Mina asked Jonathan what his nightmares (of old, and occasionally still) had been about.

“My mind watches, as if at a play, while onstage my body is torn apart by those women. I want to scream at myself to run, but the body onstage remains still, and there is even pleasure on its face as his limbs are devoured. And yours?”

“Nothing so coherent as that,” she told him. “Bits and pieces of what happened- the taste of salt in my mouth, or his voice mocking me, or my skin burning at a wafer’s touch.”

Jonathan held her, or she held him, and finally sleep would come. And so it went for one month, then two, then three.

Which of them initiated a change was hard to say. But one night, Jonathan’s kisses trailed down to Mina’s shoulders, and she guided his hand between her legs.

“Tell me,” he whispered. “What do you want?”

She started slowly- she wanted him to kiss her along her spine. She wanted to feel his hands on her waist. She would guide him, and eventually her requests turned to kisses and caresses while Jonathan’s hesitation melted away. They were gentle with each other that night. Perhaps they would not need to be in the future.

Their sleep was sound, with no dreams to tell of in the morning.


End file.
